


What love will do to you

by Baryshnikov



Series: Crossing the red-stained veil [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Horrific love, Implied Sexual Content, Light Masochism, Love, M/M, Sort Of, Twisted love, sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 09:29:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20740013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Tom just couldn't take it anymore.





	What love will do to you

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies, I wrote this as a stream of consciousness with no plan whatsoever, on less than an hour, on my phone, whilst lying in bed because I couldn't sleep, so there are bound to be mistakes, a lot of them, I'll fix them tomorrow.

Love was akin to madness.

To disillusionment. 

To radicalization. 

For what could be more radical than falling in love? To Tom, there was nothing. Nothing more shocking, or sudden, or horrific, than discovering his heart had fallen into madness.

That once where order had thrived, chaos now reigned; lines scrawled themselves across his blank pages, writing out a story he had never anticipated would be his. 

And it was sickening. 

Painful. 

Horrid. 

_Monstrous._

That was the word, the _only_ word, that could ever describe what it was like to have a hurricane tearing through his veins. A torment unlike any other. 

For this was not pain. 

Tom knew pain, he knew it as a friend, as death's favourite companion. There would never be a day where Tom did not remember how intimate he and pain had become; how curiously intertwined they had become, two pieces of iron wrought together just for fate's entertainment. 

But this was not pain. 

This was pleasure. 

And pleasure was an infinitely _harder_ thing to understand. 

Whereas Tom could recognise the prickle of pain on the back of his neck, he never remembered what that smooth sliding down his spine was, or what the flush that spiralled down his neck actually meant.

It did not help that it was impermanent. An intangible emotion as ephemeral as a butterfly's wing, it drifted through the air, only settling upon him when he caught Harry's eye. 

Though it did not lightly land. 

It collided. 

The impact, like a wave when it breaks would knock the oxygen from his lungs and he'd be left drowning in an excess of air. 

Gulping. 

Choking. 

Begging the monster that must have its hand around his throat to release him, if only for a moment. 

It only laughed. 

And let him stumble into the bathroom and sit under the sprinkle of the shower while wearing all his clothes. Just sitting there until he was sodden, until every, single layer of his skin was soaked and that horrid, horrid, heat that curled its way right into his stomach had stopped. 

At least, that was how it started. 

As a craving for some satisfaction, for the ache to subside even for a moment. But there was no satisfaction. Only frustration. Only his hands balled into fists, pulling at his jumper, twisting the fabric between his fingers because he needed to _grip_ on something, however trivial. He needed to touch until he was cold again. Until the fire had been dampened a d he could breathe in the silence. For the simple quietness of the bathroom offered an oasis from the noise of Tom's head and the clamour of all the people, and the glint of Harry's eyes. 

It was a time to himself. 

A time to stop fucking fighting whatever this was and just... 

Just... 

Let it consume him. 

Let it eat him. Feel how this wanting rolled him on its tongue until he was hot and sticky and clenching every muscle. Just let it coil its way through every artery, filling him with so much _feeling_that it stretched his skin impossibly wide and made him put holes through his lips. 

And it ached. 

It ached so fucking much. 

Rubbing, chafing, scraping him harder and harder until his nerves became exposed wires that no amount of tape could stop from sparking. 

Looking back, that was the cliff edge. 

And Tom flung himself right off of it. 

He stopped the water running cold. He preferred it blistering. To see the steam curling off the tiles and cutting into his skin. He like to feel the burn right down to his bones; he like the way it melted all the wires that held him together and just let him... 

Let go.

Though, this was not a defeat, this was a challenge. An experiment of what it was like to fight fire with fire as it were. 

To embrace every feeling that dared to make itself known, until the one that plagued him could no longer hide in ambiguity. 

But the only the only thing that came to Tom in those moments of supposed enlightenment, was Harry. Just the edges of his silhouette, and the very tips of his fingers. Tom could feel them in the droplets of water on his skin, and he could coax more... _visceral_ sensations if he could bear to close his eyes. 

To give in to it all. 

In the privacy of behind closed lids, like a curtain spread across his face to preserve his modesty, Tom felt safe. Like this, with no assumptions and no fears, he could feel Harry, so much closer. His fingers threading themselves through his hair, lacing as finer needlework as his clumsy hands could manage. And if he squeezed his eyes so tight, Tom could feel the press of Harry's hand against his thigh, and the burn of Harry's lips as their mouths came to touch. 

Harry's tongue was scalding. 

Or maybe that was the water? 

Either way, it didn't really matter. All that did, was the burning and blistering and the splintering of all his decency as Tom imagined the things he'd let Harry do to him when no one else could see. The trailing of his fimgernail, pressing into his skin until they almost bled, and the twisting of hands through his hair, and the novelty of a weight above him, so firm on his hips, keeping him still, to just take what he was given. 

And all because he was mad. 

Disillusioned. 

Radicalised by love. 

And he wouldn't have it any other fucking way.


End file.
